You wake up, but not completely. Your eyes are opened and you can see a little bit around you. But you see things that are not real, like hallucinations. You are still dreaming and at the same time awake. And you can’t move. Your body is still asleep. You are paralysed. Then you feel a danger. If you don’t wake up and move quickly you will be in a great danger and you will die! You feel a threatening presence. Something like a demon. Then the paralysis disappears and you wake up entirely and you are ok.
I must say that this disorder is not related to mental illness at all despite most people experience hallucinations when the disorder occurs. It is a sleep disorder called “sleep paralysis” and a lot of healthy or “normal” persons experience it in their life and they feel the danger and the demon presence too and they also have hallucinations. Just look Wikipedia for it!
I used to have that a lot some years ago. Almost every night, I don’t know why. It is very frightening! But one day I found a trick. To end the paralysis, I just had to try to move my head and it worked all the time. When I tried to move other parts of my body, it wouldn’t work.
I always knew that it was just a stupid sleep disorder so I was not worrying about that. I always thought about that in a rational way.
yes, its very unpleasant, try to move my hands but fail all the time. Others say they see things, but i cant open my eyes also, only feel preassure on my chast, or once felt like somoene choking me with hands, that was scary
It happened to me last night, maybe bc I have a cold. It happened like 2-3 times. I was widely awake but hallucinating in a way in my dream so I tried so hard to open my eyes and move and just stayed inside the dream
I tried to get up and put effort in it, so that is how I got up and then it happened over and over again. It is horrible! I hate it!!!
It sucks. I had it on prolixin 2-3 times and one time other. After a couple times I consciously knew what to expect and it wasn’t as bad. Still bad though. Anxiety disorders can trigger it. I had terrible anxiety on prolixin. Haven’t had it in 4 years. Wouldn’t wish it on anybody. Very disturbing.
rule 1 of sleep paralysis club…seems to be don’t discuss sleep paralysis… which sucks because its hard to share tricks and tips with out triggering each other… I found the same trick as you did but sadly it doesn’t work all the time anymore…
I get this too, comes and goes in phases with different frequency. I always seem to see shadowy people around me and think I’m about to be a victim of ritual sacrifice
Yea i get it if i ever get really sleep deprived. Very rarely on its own. Last time it happened my heart hurt very badly, it was a weird undescribable sensation. Scary
Yeah I got it allll the time back during my first major psychotic episode. I learned how to snap out of it like you did, but I found it interesting so sometimes I would stay in that state to observe it. Anyways after I learned how to deal with it now it only happens rarely.
i just woke up from sleep paralysis. I read a study saying ap’s make it happen more often than if your not on them, I used to get it every night when I was on Zyprexa but now it just happens sometimes its not really that scary, sometimes I will hear voices during it and see stuff drawn on the walls but it is rarely scary and most of the time I can move a little bit but my vision will be all weird
I was able to mostly stop my sleep paralysis by waking up at the same time every day and cutting out naps. Now, when my body sleeps, it is fully asleep, and when it wakes up, it is fully awake.
Sometimes I’ll be asleep, and I’ll be struggling to yell in my dream, but it is very hard for me to do that. When I finally do yell I yell in real life and wake myself up. Also, one time I was sleeping, and I dreamed I woke up, but instead of really waking up I went into another dream. I did that twice in one dream one time.
Interestinly…and contrarily to what some people are saying…APs eradicated my sleep paralysis. I had it since i was a kid and it steadily worsened until during my last psychotic episode it was happening every night, multiple times a night. But granted,during that time period i had a miasma of other sleep issues as you might expect. I havent talked about it with my current pdoc but I expect my psychosis and aleep paralysis were linked
I experience sleep paralysis often. I’ve experienced it enough and in conspicuous state that I believe this can be induced by other people but not all the time
I was just gonna make a post about this 